Business in Vancouver December 4-10, 2007; issue 945 (www.biv.com)

Pappas expands to Richmond as growing Canadian fur industry opts for public image makeover

Glen Korstrom

The Fur Council of Canada is out to convince consumers that the $1.5 billion North American fur industry is environmentally sustainable and that fur is an eco-friendly material, not a cruelly obtained skin.

Green buzzwords - such as "sustainable," "renewable," "biodegradable" and "non-toxic" - are sprinkled throughout the council's website, advertising and billboards as part of a $1 million marketing campaign launched last week.

The campaign has drawn the predictable derision from animal rights groups, but marketing experts say it's backed by persuasive arguments.

"They're using part of an encirclement attack, which is what we teach," said Lindsay Meredith, a Simon Fraser University marketing professor.

Strong challengers use encirclement attacks to compete with market leaders. In this case, the fur council's frontal assault is aimed squarely at the high-profile anti-fur lobby.

"What they have to do now is overcome the major attack point," Meredith said. "That's the issue of how wild animals are trapped and handled. For farmed animals, their positioning is not bad. They've got to treat this simply as, 'Hey, look, don't get two-faced about this. You guys eat cows every day so there's no difference. Your shoes are made of leather so back off.''

The anti-fur lobby has achieved prominence from its own public awareness campaigns. Its mid-1990s "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" campaign featured naked supermodels on billboards. Members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have similarly drawn attention by throwing red paint at fur-wearing fashion models on catwalks.

"We think it's the responsibility of the industry to explain our own story," Fur Council of Canada executive vice-president Alan Herscovici told Business in Vancouver. "Consumers who wear fur have a right to know that it's an environmentally sustainable industry. We're supporting the people on the land."

Herscovici said that seldom-used leg-hold traps have improved over the years so that they hold the animal in place without cutting into flesh. They're no longer the steel-jawed devices that still appear on the posters of anti-fur lobby groups.

"Nature is not Disneyland. Wildlife dies in nature," Herscovici said. "For example, 80% of young muskrats don't make it through their first winter. Each species produces many more young each year than the habitat can support. This is the principle of sustainable use."

The fur council's campaign comes from a position of strength. Canadian fur exports grew 25% to $450.1 million in 2006 from $360.6 million in 2005.

Locally, that strength is clear from Pappas Furs' expansion in June to Richmond's Aberdeen Centre.

Pappas' president Constantine Pappas said his 700-square-foot Richmond store has done a brisk business and can be supplied with corporately designed garments from the company's 24,000-square-foot, four-storey Yaletown headquarters. That facility includes a 6,000-square-foot retail store, as well as space for designing, manufacturing and reselling raw fur.

Pappas would not reveal annual revenue, but he said his company is the world's largest fully vertically integrated fur company.

This is despite a bit of a setback at the turn of the century. Pappas opened a second store at the corner of Howe and Hastings streets in 1999. He closed the outlet in 2002.

"In 2003, we started to see a turnaround in people's attitudes toward fur," Pappas said. "In 2005/2006 we started to get a lot of young people. That's something that we hadn't seen for 10 to 15 years. The business has been growing since 2004."

But Peter Hamilton, who founded Vancouver's Lifeforce Foundation, believes fur retailers have blood on their hands.

He recently visited Lower Mainland fur farms and was quickly shown the door after he started snapping photos of animals in cramped cages.

"If the fur council says fur farming is ecologically friendly, they should allow people to take photographs and especially see the slaughter methods," said Hamilton, who doesn't eat meat or wear leather.

"There could be 50,000 mink on one farm. There's no way to be able to kill them all painlessly and instantly." 

Wild fur industry is dying, group says

RE: "Fur flying new green flag" (BIV issue 945; December 4-10)

The Fur Council of Canada is being funded by the Canadian Ministry of Trade as well as by Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

This is the same Canadian government that has silenced the voice of the largest animal charities in Canada by restricting their criticism of the fur industry with the loss of their charitable status. Because we would not be silenced, our 40 year-old charitable status was revoked by Revenue Canada.

However, I was pleased to read [Simon Fraser University marketing professor] Lindsey Meredith's comments and particularly his statement "What they have to do now is overcome the major attack point. That's the issue of how wild animals are trapped and handled."

This they cannot do as long as fur-bearing animals are being caught and suffering in cruel traps across Canada and throughout the USA, where most animals are trapped.

The steel-jawed leg-hold trap, contrary to the fur council's claim, is still the main trap used throughout North America and is now known worldwide for its cruelty. The fur industry has attempted to confuse the public by adding a thin strip of material to the jaws and then calling it a padded trap.

The European Union has been trying to ban wild fur imports for many years and only threats of action under GATT and WTO have delayed such action. The EU is still now considering this issue.

However, the effect of the European public's concern over cruel trapping has resulted in the major blow against the fur council. The public is no longer buying wild fur as it once did.

Canada used to trap five and a half million animals each year in the 1980's while now it is down to less than one million animals trapped a year. In BC for example, the 1980 figure was 300,000 and last year only about 35,000 animals were trapped, a 90% decrease. Similar numbers and decreases are evident across Canada and throughout the U.S.A.

The Fur Council is far too late to save its image of cruel trapping.

We agree that there have been some significant increases in sales of caged mink (and some caged fox) due to increased sales in China and Russia. The height of the market is now about to start collapsing as the mink market is just about saturated. In a year or two China, the main mink producer, will start reducing prices and the North American mink producers will soon fail.

Further, without the glamour, variety and originality of wild furs, the same old boring mink fur will soon lose its appeal with the public.

The fur industry is dying and no waving green flag is going to save it. The world's public has learned about cruel trapping and knows of all the animal suffering.

George Clements

President

Fur-Bearer Defenders Vancouver